Gluten-free diets today are more than a medical prescription for a specific pathological condition; they have become a trend followed by thousands of people worldwide. But what is behind this obsession with gluten-free foods?
In the summer of 2010, tennis player Novak Djokovic consulted Serbian nutritionist Igor Cetojevic. Djokovic suspected something was wrong with his diet, as he had repeatedly experienced painful collapses during matches. His nutritionist conducted tests and concluded that Djokovic needed a gluten-free diet. In his autobiography, Djokovic describes how this changed his life.
A story with a happy ending, many would say. So, the problem must be gluten, many reductionist minds would conclude. Gluten is the name given to the proteins found in wheat, rye, and barley—grains present in many foods such as flours, pastas, malt, food colorings, beer, some sauces, dressings, yeasts, etc. Celiac disease is a genetic autoimmune disorder in which, upon ingesting a food containing gluten, the body's defense system reacts by attacking the small intestine. It is a hereditary disease affecting one in 100 people, and it is most prevalent in Caucasian populations.
The problem with the obsession over gluten is that now many people assume themselves to be intolerant to it. An allergy differs from an intolerance because the former is immune-mediated, meaning the body's defenses act against an allergen. In this whole gluten story, scientific evidence and meta-analyses have not found that avoiding gluten offers health benefits for people who are not celiac. In fact, some studies suggest that a gluten-free diet for non-celiac individuals may be less healthy due to the relationship between vitamin and mineral intake from foods containing gluten.
There are studies and testimonies about the perception of scientific falsehoods, in this case, the perception among non-celiac individuals convinced that a gluten-free diet is healthier. The main difficulty reported by nutritionists and doctors is that even when it is explained to a person that they are not celiac and that gluten is not harmful in their diet, the person does not hear what they do not want to hear.
The explanation for this, firstly, is that if a person stops consuming foods with gluten without replacing them with others, their intake of carbohydrates and therefore calories may decrease, leading to slight weight loss. Secondly, many foods containing gluten also have yeasts that can cause gas and abdominal distension, which are unrelated to gluten itself. Thirdly, the power of the mind and the placebo effect is stronger than any medical finding.
Behind this phenomenon, we can also understand that today, people seek voices that claim to be scientific or medically knowledgeable beyond what a health professional says. This leads us to consider, on one hand, that perhaps the way messages are handled and the health professional-patient relationship are not the most effective. On the other hand, the good news is that the medical figure is no longer seen as paternalistic regarding health care. In the Internet era, instead of health professionals getting upset because people do their own information searches, a dialogue should be established to educate people on how to distinguish a reliable and trustworthy source from one that promotes pseudoscience.
— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.